The present invention relates to an equipment console that may be mounted within a vehicle driver compartment to support equipment in a location easily accessible to a driver of the vehicle.
Police officers, public safety officers, firefighters, paramedics and the like carry various types of equipment in their vehicles. Several pieces of equipment are often carried in a single vehicle, and the driver often needs to operate the equipment while simultaneously driving the vehicle. Thus, various devices exist to secure multiple pieces of equipment within a vehicle so that they are accessible to the driver and/or other persons in the vehicle driver compartment.
These devices commonly include a hollow rectangular box situated on the floor of the vehicle between the driver seat and front passenger seat, including a horizontal top portion having an upward-facing opening for receiving pieces of equipment. Police cruisers, for example, are commonly fitted with equipment boxes of this type. The boxes are used to house various types of equipment and controls used by police officers, such as radios, siren controls and light bar controls. Typically, the boxes are sized and positioned so that most of the box extends between the driver seat and the front seat. Only a small portion, if any, of the box will extend forward toward the dashboard beyond the driver seat and front passenger seat. In some police cruisers, the equipment box extends all the way back to the prisoner partition separating the rear seating area from the driver compartment. A laptop computer is often positioned between the box and dashboard, and is secured to the vehicle floor with various types of mounting hardware.
Systems employing the conventional equipment box described above suffer from a number of problems associated with the position of the box within the vehicle driver compartment. First, the box is located to the side of the driver, instead of to the front of the driver near the dashboard. This requires the driver to rotate their upper body and reach back slightly to operate equipment housed in the box. The housed equipment is also well out of the driver""s line of sight, requiring the driver to look over and down between the seats to see the equipment and controls mounted in the box. This is particularly a problem in vehicles having sirens and light bars, as the controls for these devices typically have several buttons and switches.
In addition, the location of the conventional equipment box can interfere with movements of the driver and passengers, and with the operation and storage of other equipment. For example, in a police cruiser, the area between the front seats immediately in front of the prisoner partition is often used to store a shotgun. The conventional equipment box configuration described above makes it more difficult to store and remove a shotgun from this area. The configuration also limits space between the seats that otherwise would be available to store other types of equipment, such as a flashlight, flashlight charger, cell phone, etc. Finally, the box and the equipment mounted to the box can obstruct arm movement of the driver and front seat passenger.
The present invention provides a vehicle equipment console for use in a vehicle driver compartment having a dashboard, floor and driver seat. The equipment console includes a console body for supporting equipment in a location accessible to a driver seated in the driver seat. The console body includes a front portion configured to receive and support the equipment, and a back generally opposite the front portion. The back of the console body may be integrated with the dashboard by shaping the back of the console body to have a profile that conforms at least partially to a contour of the dashboard. The console body may also be configured to cover an area of the dashboard in which climate controls were originally installed, with an upper portion of the console body being adapted to receive and secure the climate controls in a relocated position so that they may be operated from the front of the console body.